I figured this out an an early age, when my third grade teacher--a rigid, rule-following, church-lady fundamentalist--put me back in third grade.  ("You're in third grade, you'll do the third grade work."  End of discussion.  Never mind that I'd already covered that material in grade two, along with grade four material.) I could have lost interest at that point--a lot of kids in similar situations do--but I discovered art and reading in a big way, and I realized that what happens in the classroom does not have to define what you learn.  It's a starting point, not a ceiling. 

I do have a college degree, plus some formal education since college--a second teaching area in history, enough classes to take me half way to an MBA (bfd), lots of music lessons (classical guitar, lute, voice)--but for the most part, I consider myself self-educated.   I'll latch only a topic, dive into immersion mode, and just freaking learn it.  Sixteenth century English history.  The social history of witchcraft in the western world.  The celtic harp.  The craft of writing.  Not to mention all the things I want/need to write ABOUT.  

In fact, one of the things I like most about writing is that there's always something to learn.  I have an built-in excuse to log onto the Rhode Island library system and order all the books by Scott McCloud on graphic novels.  Psychic espionage?  Fascinating topic, totally justified by the novella coming out this September.  Stregheria, the heriditary Italian witchcraft tradition?  I own a small library of books on the topic,  which will eventually pay their way  through a non-fiction article about the folklore of the "evil eye,"  and an urban fantasy book coming up about 5 or 6 projects down the pike.  Writing also justifies travel as a way to learn what you need to know.  A pilgrimage to Glastonbury, Cadbury hill, Stonehenge, Tintagel, and other sites associated with Arthurian legend has not yet shown up in a novel, but it will.  A visit to the Roman ruins in Bath, plus a half dozen history books, will eventually become two short stories.  Books about shapeshifting lore and legends will be coming in fiction form 3 or 4  projects down the line.  And so it goes.  There's always something to learn, and I wouldn't have it any other way.  

 I haven't studied science since high school, but since the project I'm writing with Susan Mates has a "magic system" that's based on endosymbiotic theory, I need to dust off that corner of my brain.  For a while, I've seen that prospect as daunting.  Fortunately Susan has a solid science background--she has been a physician, a research scientist, and a med school teacher.  A specialist in infectuous diseases, she ran a TB clinic and has disturbing/intriguing insight into the secret lives of microorganisms.  She graduated from Yale med school, taught at Brown, AND has won awards for literary short fiction. (Not TOO intimidating, right?)  Compare to that my total lack of credentials when it comes to the science part of science fiction.  I was a music major, of all things, with an education degree from a fourth-rate bible college.  But life--my life, at least--seems to be a circular process of relearning lessons, coming to familiar conclusions.  

Okay, I don't have any formal education in science and have never taken a single class in microbiology or genetics, two topics that are pivotal to this story.  Not to go all Dick Cheney, but . . . . So?

I can read, I know where the library is, I can afford to order several Lynne Margulis books from Amazon.com, and with the help of a dictionary, I can get through pertinent articles from technical journals.  And I'm getting very excited about this new area of self-education, and the book that it will eventually support.  Good times ahead! 

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